[Tex/LaTex] comment package: Show/hide comments Inside a section title

comments

I'm pretty close to being a LaTeX beginner. I'm hoping to use the comment package to indicate author's names (i.e. who's responsible for writing) on each section of a shared paper. This could then temporarily be shown in the TOC.
But in the manual: "with the opening and closing commands again on a line of their own."
Clearly my code won't work and I'm not clear how to solve it. Any recommendations?
Much appreciated!
Michael

\documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage{comment}
\includecomment{sectionauthor}
\begin{document}
\section{First Section \sectionauthor Me \endsectionauthor }
\section{Second Section \sectionauthor You \endsectionauthor }
\end{document}

Best Answer

Here's a way to do it: the command \sectionauthor must have two different meanings and we accomplish it by changing its definition inside a group when we typeset the table of contents.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\newrobustcmd{\sectionauthor}[1]{%
  \unskip % remove the space before it
  \\ % go to a new line
  {\normalsize\normalfont #1}%
}
\newcommand{\titlesectionauthor}[1]{%
  {\normalfont (#1)}% section author in parentheses
}


\begin{document}

\begingroup % make the change to \sectionauthor local
\let\sectionauthor\titlesectionauthor
\tableofcontents
\endgroup

\section{First Section \sectionauthor{Me}}
\section{Second Section \sectionauthor{You}}
\end{document}

I use \newrobustcmd from etoolbox because it's more practical than the standard \DeclareRobustCommand. It's necessary to declare \sectionauthor as robust, because this will make LaTeX write it unmodified in the .toc file, so we can use it also for giving it a new meaning.

I have applied some formatting instructions, modify them to suit your needs.

enter image description here

You can implement a “toggle on and off” on the two possibilities:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

% comment the following line if you don't want the author to show in the body
\newtoggle{sectionauthor}
% comment the following line if you don't want the author to show in the TOC
\newtoggle{tocsectionauthor}

\toggletrue{sectionauthor}
\toggletrue{tocsectionauthor}

\newrobustcmd{\sectionauthor}[1]{%
  \iftoggle{sectionauthor}
    {% what to do if the toggle is true
     \unskip % remove the space before it
     \\ % go to a new line
     {\normalsize\normalfont #1}%
    }
    {% what to do if the toggle is false
     \unskip % remove the space before it
    }%
}

\newcommand{\tocsectionauthor}[1]{%
  \iftoggle{tocsectionauthor}
    {% what to do if the toggle is true
     {\normalfont (#1)}% section author in parentheses
    }
    {% what to do if the toggle is false
     \unskip % remove the space before it
    }%
}


\begin{document}

\begingroup % make the change to \sectionauthor local
\let\sectionauthor\tocsectionauthor
\tableofcontents
\endgroup

\section{First Section \sectionauthor{Me}}
\section{Second Section \sectionauthor{You}}
\end{document}

The output without commenting (a % in front of the line suffices) the two lines is the same as above. If we comment only the first line, we get

enter image description here

If we comment only the second line we remove the names from the TOC, but leave them in the body. Commenting out both lines the names disappear completely.

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